Hizballah makes sweeping territorial claims in northern Israel

Lebanon's Hizballah terrorist militia on Monday set the stage for continuing its conflict with Israel even if Jerusalem meets its current territorial demands.

Hizballah justified its continuing aggression against Israel following the 2000 withdrawal of all Israeli forces from southern Lebanon by claiming a hilltop in the eastern section of the Golan Heights also belonged to Lebanon.

The United Nations verified that Israel had conducted a full withdrawal, and rejected Hizballah's claim that the Shebaa Farms was part of Lebanon.

But Hizballah's "foreign minister," Nawaf Musawi, was cited by Ha'aretz as telling the Norwegian ambassador to Lebanon that Israel's surrender of the Shebaa Farms would not be enough.

Musawi claims that large swaths of northern Israel encompassing seven different villages and at least 20 large farms are also legally part of Lebanon. According to Musawi, the "Zionists" moved the border in the early 1920s and stole the additional land.

Of course, neither Lebanon nor Israel were independent sovereign nations in the 1920s, and therefore had no internationally recognized border between them. Lebanon declared its independence from a French-administered League of Nations mandate in 1941, and Israel gained its independence from the British Mandate in 1948.

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